Sunday, 17 August 2008
School's Out For Summer
I can’t remember when my Dad first mentioned the possibility of sending my son to RHS. It’s always been there as an acceptable option since he was born, seeing that the majority of men on my dad’s side went. I don’t think I seriously considered it until the spring term of J’s year six, by which time it would be too late for him to begin at RHS in year seven.
I have two reasons for going down the boarding school route. One I can be completely open about, the other I generally keep closer to my chest.
The first is that he’s a bright kid, but very lazy. All he has learnt from his first year in a state secondary school is that he can do almost no work and yet somehow still come in the top three for all his subjects. As he’s the youngest in the school, that’s quite impressive, but it can’t continue for ever. The habit of not working, not listening and not thinking will take root and leave him without the options he’s capable of getting for himself, with just a little work. Instead, he will be stopping at the park on the way home from school with his friends, and as I’m not so very much older than him, I know what that led to for me, and worry that it will be worse for him.
Life is hard for teenagers to make sense of.
The second is me. Again, this is twofold but centres fundamentally on the inevitable fact that he was born whilst I was an unmarried teenager. Although in many ways I was an atypical teenage mother, I have a major fear that it will end up a self fulfilling prophecy if he remains at the state school, around such a wide cross section that is only manageable if staff employ some level of stereotyping. I also know just how judgemental and unkind secondary school teachers can be when there is a stereotypical scapegoat in sight.
The other aspect of that is that I feel that often I am a dreadful mother. I’m snappy and bossy and mean and I know that I take my lovely little (big!) boy for granted. I can’t help feeling it’s better for him to be away from me and around people who will treat him fairly and kindly instead of be constantly short tempered and unreasonable with him.
The entry relied on three aspects all coming together: the bursary, the exam and the interview.
The bursary application came first. As the number of bursaries given to students and prospective students had been cut from two hundred a year to twenty five a year, I didn’t know what his chances were. The reply came back that, if he was given a bursary, it would be for all but four hundred pounds a year. At nearly seven thousand pounds a term, this is one of the biggest bursaries available.
His interview with the deputy head went well. At least, he seemed to come out of it successfully, and he gained the top mark on his entrance exam. That led to a further exam and interview for an academic scholarship.
He did well in those, too, but was awarded the position of Honorary Scholar. This is because recipients of bursaries cannot also claim scholarships.
I went ahead and accepted the place knowing that J was not wild about leaving his friends at the state school. Year seven has been dominated by him trying to persuade me not to send him to RHS. Yet, it is a magnificent school and I am confident that he will settle and that it will be right for him in the long term and he’ll still have friends round every corner when he comes home.
After months of nagging, his leaving party was a few days after the end of term. It consisted of nearly thirty kids in our back garden playing chart music very loud, being high as kites on fizzy drinks, playing obscure and noisy games and generally having a good time. It was over within three hours and the cleaning up left to do the next morning was mainly plastic cups, paper plates and party poppers. With parties for twelve year olds, there’s none of the next-day biohazard sites that begin to arise with older teenage parties along with empties of White Lightning.
And suddenly, it’s just weeks away. Soon he’ll be gone. I have yet to buy a number of things on the list and concluded that there are many that I won’t buy new, he can just take from home. The biggest task left, aside from actually taking him, is sewing on the name tapes. Everything has to be named and I’m going to have to invite friends round for a name tape sewing circle just to get it done in time.
Then he’ll be gone, and the house will seem empty and quiet. I will be lonely.
I’m already looking forward to half term.
I have two reasons for going down the boarding school route. One I can be completely open about, the other I generally keep closer to my chest.
The first is that he’s a bright kid, but very lazy. All he has learnt from his first year in a state secondary school is that he can do almost no work and yet somehow still come in the top three for all his subjects. As he’s the youngest in the school, that’s quite impressive, but it can’t continue for ever. The habit of not working, not listening and not thinking will take root and leave him without the options he’s capable of getting for himself, with just a little work. Instead, he will be stopping at the park on the way home from school with his friends, and as I’m not so very much older than him, I know what that led to for me, and worry that it will be worse for him.
Life is hard for teenagers to make sense of.
The second is me. Again, this is twofold but centres fundamentally on the inevitable fact that he was born whilst I was an unmarried teenager. Although in many ways I was an atypical teenage mother, I have a major fear that it will end up a self fulfilling prophecy if he remains at the state school, around such a wide cross section that is only manageable if staff employ some level of stereotyping. I also know just how judgemental and unkind secondary school teachers can be when there is a stereotypical scapegoat in sight.
The other aspect of that is that I feel that often I am a dreadful mother. I’m snappy and bossy and mean and I know that I take my lovely little (big!) boy for granted. I can’t help feeling it’s better for him to be away from me and around people who will treat him fairly and kindly instead of be constantly short tempered and unreasonable with him.
The entry relied on three aspects all coming together: the bursary, the exam and the interview.
The bursary application came first. As the number of bursaries given to students and prospective students had been cut from two hundred a year to twenty five a year, I didn’t know what his chances were. The reply came back that, if he was given a bursary, it would be for all but four hundred pounds a year. At nearly seven thousand pounds a term, this is one of the biggest bursaries available.
His interview with the deputy head went well. At least, he seemed to come out of it successfully, and he gained the top mark on his entrance exam. That led to a further exam and interview for an academic scholarship.
He did well in those, too, but was awarded the position of Honorary Scholar. This is because recipients of bursaries cannot also claim scholarships.
I went ahead and accepted the place knowing that J was not wild about leaving his friends at the state school. Year seven has been dominated by him trying to persuade me not to send him to RHS. Yet, it is a magnificent school and I am confident that he will settle and that it will be right for him in the long term and he’ll still have friends round every corner when he comes home.
After months of nagging, his leaving party was a few days after the end of term. It consisted of nearly thirty kids in our back garden playing chart music very loud, being high as kites on fizzy drinks, playing obscure and noisy games and generally having a good time. It was over within three hours and the cleaning up left to do the next morning was mainly plastic cups, paper plates and party poppers. With parties for twelve year olds, there’s none of the next-day biohazard sites that begin to arise with older teenage parties along with empties of White Lightning.
And suddenly, it’s just weeks away. Soon he’ll be gone. I have yet to buy a number of things on the list and concluded that there are many that I won’t buy new, he can just take from home. The biggest task left, aside from actually taking him, is sewing on the name tapes. Everything has to be named and I’m going to have to invite friends round for a name tape sewing circle just to get it done in time.
Then he’ll be gone, and the house will seem empty and quiet. I will be lonely.
I’m already looking forward to half term.
Thursday, 14 August 2008
Panic on the Streets of London
Today I got a phone call. I’d just finished scrumping some of my Dad’s apples while he was safely out of the way, had just got back in the car.
I’m glad I heard the call. Had my radio not locked itself when the car battery was changed I might have missed it.
It was my cousin, M. She sounded like she had a bit of a cold but it transpired shortly that actually she’d been crying. Here’s why:
Severely dyslexic, she’s been studying outdoor adventure management at university for a few years. She loves it, but what she doesn’t love is exams. She dodged an exam in the summer term because she was ill. Having seen her today I would hazard a guess that her fear of exams contributed to that illness.
A week ago some post for her was delivered to her mama’s house. A week later (today) her mama told her that post was there. One of the letters was from her university telling her that she had to re-sit the exam next Wednesday. It was this that had sent her into absolute meltdown.
My response to that would have been to go home, get my study stuff then hit the library.
Or rather, my response would have been totally different because I would have prepared for the exam in the first place and it is extremely unlikely that I would have considered missing an exam acceptable under anything but the most extreme circumstances. But M is not me and has been skipping exams and getting default grades from classwork for years, since her final year at school. I’m not really sure how she managed to get away with this but get away with it she has.
Now that there is no way out of an exam, she’s seriously considering dropping out rather than just taking it like a woman.
There are two issues that are stopping her. I can see where they come from and don’t blame her but she has to deal with them if she wants to move forward with her degree and her career.
First of all there’s panic. I am no stranger to panic myself and although I almost definitely have higher levels of anxiety than a lot of people, panic moves out of my mind as quickly as it sets in. I have a theory that this is because I invite it, but I can give it some one to one time, then show it the door. It works for me. It stops the panic taking over and infecting every thought and bringing me to a standstill.
I’m not talking about panic attacks that truly feel like a coronary, just the sort of brain freeze that used to leave me in an unfocused flap for days at a time.
Right now, M does not have days to be in a flap. She has an exam for which she has not prepared in less than a week and she has paid work in the meantime. On the plus side, she’s been on the course all year so the content shouldn’t have sunk to the very bottom of her mind just yet.
The second is classic and chronic M. She has a huge sense that the world has been fundamentally unjust toward her and her alone. Following her logic, if things don’t work out for her then there is someone else to blame.
Sometimes that person has been me, and M’s mama like a lioness protecting a cub has pounced. In fact, nothing like a lioness unless lionesses have taken to telephoning their nieces and shouting at them for things that really and truly are nothing to do with them.
So I know M does this, and I don’t hold it against her. Her mama does it too but I always hope than M will grow out of it. Right now, in the context of the Unexpected Exam, it unfolds like this:
a) It was not M’s fault that she missed her original exam because she was working too much at her paid jobs, one of which her mama had got her. Thus, it was her mama’s fault.
b) It was not M’s fault that she thought she wouldn’t have to do the exam because she was set an assessment covering the same topics as the exam. Thus, it was her lecturers’ fault and makes no sense anyway.
c) It was not M’s fault that she had done no preparation because she was ill from working too much in the few weeks leading up to the exam and when she was not working she needed to unwind (usually in the pub).
d) It was not M’s fault that she didn’t know about the exam until a week beforehand because her mama only just told her she had post. It’s her mama’s fault.
e) It was not M’s fault because life, God and the universe are unfair and it is always someone else’s fault. If in doubt, blame God.
All of this I have said to her and can be summed up simply by telling her she must take responsibility for her own actions or inactions. No excuses, just take the blame then move on.
I don’t know whether she’s managed to do it, though. Judging from a chat with her mama earlier this evening it sounds like she’s still panicking and so still casting around for someone else to blame. The panic and the blame jointly require energy and creativity, which she could be channelling towards constructive exam preparation.
After all, the exam is in Service Operations Management, not Panicking and Blaming Other People.
I’m glad I heard the call. Had my radio not locked itself when the car battery was changed I might have missed it.
It was my cousin, M. She sounded like she had a bit of a cold but it transpired shortly that actually she’d been crying. Here’s why:
Severely dyslexic, she’s been studying outdoor adventure management at university for a few years. She loves it, but what she doesn’t love is exams. She dodged an exam in the summer term because she was ill. Having seen her today I would hazard a guess that her fear of exams contributed to that illness.
A week ago some post for her was delivered to her mama’s house. A week later (today) her mama told her that post was there. One of the letters was from her university telling her that she had to re-sit the exam next Wednesday. It was this that had sent her into absolute meltdown.
My response to that would have been to go home, get my study stuff then hit the library.
Or rather, my response would have been totally different because I would have prepared for the exam in the first place and it is extremely unlikely that I would have considered missing an exam acceptable under anything but the most extreme circumstances. But M is not me and has been skipping exams and getting default grades from classwork for years, since her final year at school. I’m not really sure how she managed to get away with this but get away with it she has.
Now that there is no way out of an exam, she’s seriously considering dropping out rather than just taking it like a woman.
There are two issues that are stopping her. I can see where they come from and don’t blame her but she has to deal with them if she wants to move forward with her degree and her career.
First of all there’s panic. I am no stranger to panic myself and although I almost definitely have higher levels of anxiety than a lot of people, panic moves out of my mind as quickly as it sets in. I have a theory that this is because I invite it, but I can give it some one to one time, then show it the door. It works for me. It stops the panic taking over and infecting every thought and bringing me to a standstill.
I’m not talking about panic attacks that truly feel like a coronary, just the sort of brain freeze that used to leave me in an unfocused flap for days at a time.
Right now, M does not have days to be in a flap. She has an exam for which she has not prepared in less than a week and she has paid work in the meantime. On the plus side, she’s been on the course all year so the content shouldn’t have sunk to the very bottom of her mind just yet.
The second is classic and chronic M. She has a huge sense that the world has been fundamentally unjust toward her and her alone. Following her logic, if things don’t work out for her then there is someone else to blame.
Sometimes that person has been me, and M’s mama like a lioness protecting a cub has pounced. In fact, nothing like a lioness unless lionesses have taken to telephoning their nieces and shouting at them for things that really and truly are nothing to do with them.
So I know M does this, and I don’t hold it against her. Her mama does it too but I always hope than M will grow out of it. Right now, in the context of the Unexpected Exam, it unfolds like this:
a) It was not M’s fault that she missed her original exam because she was working too much at her paid jobs, one of which her mama had got her. Thus, it was her mama’s fault.
b) It was not M’s fault that she thought she wouldn’t have to do the exam because she was set an assessment covering the same topics as the exam. Thus, it was her lecturers’ fault and makes no sense anyway.
c) It was not M’s fault that she had done no preparation because she was ill from working too much in the few weeks leading up to the exam and when she was not working she needed to unwind (usually in the pub).
d) It was not M’s fault that she didn’t know about the exam until a week beforehand because her mama only just told her she had post. It’s her mama’s fault.
e) It was not M’s fault because life, God and the universe are unfair and it is always someone else’s fault. If in doubt, blame God.
All of this I have said to her and can be summed up simply by telling her she must take responsibility for her own actions or inactions. No excuses, just take the blame then move on.
I don’t know whether she’s managed to do it, though. Judging from a chat with her mama earlier this evening it sounds like she’s still panicking and so still casting around for someone else to blame. The panic and the blame jointly require energy and creativity, which she could be channelling towards constructive exam preparation.
After all, the exam is in Service Operations Management, not Panicking and Blaming Other People.
Wednesday, 13 August 2008
Love me, love me, say that you love me. Fool me, fool me, go on and fool me.
On a dark, dark, night there was a dark, dark forum and in the dark, dark forum was a dark, dark thread and in the dark, dark thread someone had written that there is no such thing as too much time online.
It was not a bad post – it was essentially about easing up on oneself about something which may, actually, be productive.
In essence I support this idea: the ‘whole lotta loafin’’ to do anything properly. I’d encourage people to let themselves off the hook and just faff around a bit. Life is short, but if it’s too full then it’s the quiet moments that will be lost.
I began writing a reply to that effect, but then I decided to stop. I cancelled the reply.
I realised I disagreed.
I disagreed because spending too much time on a forum is not loafing. It’s not the equivalent of sitting reading because it’s interactive, and it feeds on itself. The poster feeds other users and they feed the original poster. It’s easy to get carried away and live on chatrooms and forums.
That’s not what I call life, though. It rarely extends beyond the screen and rarely, if ever, involves other members of the household. The effect is of someone being there but not present. It’s like having a junkie in the house (without the drug-taking artefacts). It’s pretty spooky.
So why did I have this sycophantic urge to write a supportive post to something about which I fundamentally disagree?
It’s not an isolated case, either. I generally lack the courage to speak up when I disagree or if I have to openly disagree, I try to make it sound like agreement.
Well, I blame my parents. Actually, that’s not true, I blame myself. I blame myself for wanting to be all things to all people despite knowing that that just isn’t possible, always hoping that I’ll stumble into a kindred spirit somewhere.
So for all my realisation that I was doing again what I’ve done before, the original poster is further along the path to truth (or whatever?) than me, simply by stating what he or she wants to do for his or herself, instead of insisting that everyone else is right.
Faced with a challenge, time and again, I crumble and accept someone else’s version of events that happened before my eyes.
That has to stop.
It was not a bad post – it was essentially about easing up on oneself about something which may, actually, be productive.
In essence I support this idea: the ‘whole lotta loafin’’ to do anything properly. I’d encourage people to let themselves off the hook and just faff around a bit. Life is short, but if it’s too full then it’s the quiet moments that will be lost.
I began writing a reply to that effect, but then I decided to stop. I cancelled the reply.
I realised I disagreed.
I disagreed because spending too much time on a forum is not loafing. It’s not the equivalent of sitting reading because it’s interactive, and it feeds on itself. The poster feeds other users and they feed the original poster. It’s easy to get carried away and live on chatrooms and forums.
That’s not what I call life, though. It rarely extends beyond the screen and rarely, if ever, involves other members of the household. The effect is of someone being there but not present. It’s like having a junkie in the house (without the drug-taking artefacts). It’s pretty spooky.
So why did I have this sycophantic urge to write a supportive post to something about which I fundamentally disagree?
It’s not an isolated case, either. I generally lack the courage to speak up when I disagree or if I have to openly disagree, I try to make it sound like agreement.
Well, I blame my parents. Actually, that’s not true, I blame myself. I blame myself for wanting to be all things to all people despite knowing that that just isn’t possible, always hoping that I’ll stumble into a kindred spirit somewhere.
So for all my realisation that I was doing again what I’ve done before, the original poster is further along the path to truth (or whatever?) than me, simply by stating what he or she wants to do for his or herself, instead of insisting that everyone else is right.
Faced with a challenge, time and again, I crumble and accept someone else’s version of events that happened before my eyes.
That has to stop.
Tuesday, 12 August 2008
Closing the gaps
We always try to give our kids the things we didn’t have.
For some time it has struck me that the aim of parenting as far as my friends are concerned, is to give their children the things in which they feel their own childhood was lacking.
My friend was the second eldest, the dependable one, of four children. Her family was not wealthy, often struggling financially during her formative years. Looking back, it’s the ‘stuff’ that sticks out most in her mind. The new clothes which she didn’t have, the shiny car her parents didn’t drive.
When she had her own daughter, she became a single parent. After living on a tiny budget for two years, she began paid employment. At the time, despite her intelligence, she was young and not well qualified. She didn’t have the pick of the job centre but set her mind that her daughter was going to have the things she missed during her own childhood.
That was eight years ago, and her daughter is no spoilt princess, but she has lovely clothes, shiny, hi-tech toys. Her mum drives a shiny car which is updated yearly and she lives in a comfortable home. For this, my friend holds down three jobs.
The one thing her daughter doesn’t have is time.
My childhood, on the other hand, was a world apart from hers. Both my parents had full time careers, which ate into time at home as well as during the working day. We lived in a big house with a large and intriguing garden in which I was largely unsupervised. My grandmother lived with us and I was rarely entirely alone but most of the time neither of my parents were around.
I had everything most children would want. My bedroom housed ever expanding libraries of books and toys and I kept up expensive hobbies without worrying that the money wouldn’t be there to pay for them. My parents had new cars every year and I went to a private school.
The one thing I didn’t have was their time. From the age of 7 months I was farmed out to a
childminder and put into school early.
And now I have two children of my own: one large, one small. I am a single parent living on a tiny income, trying to find ways to squeeze some earning around my daughter’s waking patterns. We have very little in material terms. A few of the nicer things we have were left from my separation and are getting tatty. The possibility of replacing them is always just out of sight.
This is the only job I have and I take it just as seriously as any other. I do my best to give my children my time and my presence. Maybe they’ll grow up and work non stop to provide their kids with everything they could desire, but to my mind, parental time is missing from so many children’s lives that without it, the stable childhood that is needed for people to grow into stable adults is disappearing fast.
At once I have the same and opposite view to my friend. We’re both trying to fill the gaps from our own childhoods, but they are different gaps and so the method of filling them remains individual.
For some time it has struck me that the aim of parenting as far as my friends are concerned, is to give their children the things in which they feel their own childhood was lacking.
My friend was the second eldest, the dependable one, of four children. Her family was not wealthy, often struggling financially during her formative years. Looking back, it’s the ‘stuff’ that sticks out most in her mind. The new clothes which she didn’t have, the shiny car her parents didn’t drive.
When she had her own daughter, she became a single parent. After living on a tiny budget for two years, she began paid employment. At the time, despite her intelligence, she was young and not well qualified. She didn’t have the pick of the job centre but set her mind that her daughter was going to have the things she missed during her own childhood.
That was eight years ago, and her daughter is no spoilt princess, but she has lovely clothes, shiny, hi-tech toys. Her mum drives a shiny car which is updated yearly and she lives in a comfortable home. For this, my friend holds down three jobs.
The one thing her daughter doesn’t have is time.
My childhood, on the other hand, was a world apart from hers. Both my parents had full time careers, which ate into time at home as well as during the working day. We lived in a big house with a large and intriguing garden in which I was largely unsupervised. My grandmother lived with us and I was rarely entirely alone but most of the time neither of my parents were around.
I had everything most children would want. My bedroom housed ever expanding libraries of books and toys and I kept up expensive hobbies without worrying that the money wouldn’t be there to pay for them. My parents had new cars every year and I went to a private school.
The one thing I didn’t have was their time. From the age of 7 months I was farmed out to a
childminder and put into school early.
And now I have two children of my own: one large, one small. I am a single parent living on a tiny income, trying to find ways to squeeze some earning around my daughter’s waking patterns. We have very little in material terms. A few of the nicer things we have were left from my separation and are getting tatty. The possibility of replacing them is always just out of sight.
This is the only job I have and I take it just as seriously as any other. I do my best to give my children my time and my presence. Maybe they’ll grow up and work non stop to provide their kids with everything they could desire, but to my mind, parental time is missing from so many children’s lives that without it, the stable childhood that is needed for people to grow into stable adults is disappearing fast.
At once I have the same and opposite view to my friend. We’re both trying to fill the gaps from our own childhoods, but they are different gaps and so the method of filling them remains individual.
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